The Tennis 128: No. 117, Darlene Hard

In 2022, I’m counting down the 128 best players of the last century. With luck, we’ll get to #1 in December. Enjoy!

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Darlene Hard [USA]
Born: 6 January 1936
Died: 2 December 2021
Career: 1954-64
Plays: Right-handed (one-handed backhand)
Peak rank: 2 (1957)
Peak Elo rating: 2,128 (2nd place, 1963)
Major singles titles: 3
Total singles titles: 39
 

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It’s safe to say, Darlene Hard would’ve trended on Twitter.

Had the world been better connected in the early 1960s, Hard would’ve received more global acclaim for her three major singles titles, not to mention thirteen women’s doubles and five mixed doubles championships at the grand slam events. Billie Jean King called her “the best doubles player of her generation,” and it’s hard to argue with that.

But that’s not what would’ve gotten Darlene going viral. When Hard died last December, obituaries settled on the word “outspoken” to capture her personality. They focused on a couple of standard-issue clashes: one with tour organizers in Australia, and another with a stodgy Wightman Cup captain. We’re meant to understand that Hard was a bit of a rebel, but not so much that we judge her negatively for it.

It’s true–the Californian was an independent woman in a milieu that didn’t always want young ladies to think for themselves. Hard bristled against unspoken rules that many of her peers were more willing to accept. She knew that she had found her calling, recognized what rewards she could get out of it, and then did everything she could to reach her goals. In time, the controversies faded, and like every other amateur-era star, she eventually starred in fuzzy, nostalgic profiles explaining that it was a different time, and back then, everyone played because they loved the game.

Yeah, that was part of it.

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On the doubles court, Darlene Hard deferred to no man. She paired with a young Australian in the mixed doubles at Wimbledon in 1959, and she began their partnership by announcing, “I’ll serve first and take the overheads.”

She wasn’t joking. Her partner later said, “I’d go out onto the court with her and I’d tell the other team that I wouldn’t have to hit any overheads. Darlene would hit them all. They’d start hitting hard shots at her at the net and she would get them all back. Pretty soon, the word was out. You better hit the ball at [me].”

That’s how Rod Laver won his first grand slam title. The pair won again in 1960, and they added a third at the French in 1961. Laver called her “a great doubles player, maybe one of the best ever at mixed.”

If anything, Hard was even better at women’s doubles. Her 13 major titles came with 8 different partners and spanned a decade and a half, from the 1955 French Championships with Beverly Baker Fleitz to the 1969 US Open with Francoise Durr. She won Wimbledon in 1957 alongside Althea Gibson, and a year later, she paired with Jeanne Arth to defeat Gibson and Maria Bueno in the final at Forest Hills.

Two years later, she won her first major title with Bueno. The pair won three-quarters of the grand slam in 1960 (skipping Australia) and tacked on two more majors in 1962 and 1963. The duo’s sway over women’s tennis was nearly total in 1960. They dominated the doubles, and depending on whose rankings you prefer, may have been the top two singles players as well.

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Hard and Bueno were close off the court, as well. In 1961, Bueno fell prey to a nasty attack of jaundice during her European tour. She was bedridden, and her national federation offered little support. Hard stayed with her through the ordeal, even skipping Wimbledon that year to remain with her friend.

Bueno wasn’t expected to recover fully, but she was back in the Wimbledon semi-finals a year later. From that point until Hard retired from the amateur game in early 1964, the pair were inseparable. They monopolized the trophies on the South African circuit in the winter of 1962-63, played events in Florida and the Caribbean in the spring of ’63, and returned to South Africa in 1963-64. They faced off 24 times on the singles court, and fittingly, they split them 12 apiece.

The pair also worked together to make the best of a complicated financial situation. The early 1960s were the peak of “shamateurism,” when tournaments attracted elite players with under-the-table payments in the guise of expense money. Everyone knew that cash changed hands, and the seaminess of it was one force that led to the push for Open tennis. But the revolution remained several years away. There was no viable women’s professional tour, so young players without family wealth were forced to live off the often fickle largesse of national federations. The only alternative was to play where they could exchange backhands for backhanders.

The first step toward maximizing “expense money” was to make your reputation, and the surest way to do that was to win Wimbledon. Bueno did so, and Hard twice reached the final–in addition to her long list of doubles feats. Beyond establishing one’s on-court prowess, there was room for off-court machinations. Ann Jones, the top British player who played Hard 31 times between 1957 and 1969, gave credit to the duo:

One or two players had themselves better organised in this respect, particularly Maria and Darlene. In fact, wherever I went, they negotiated such high expenses that there was little left for anyone else.

Jones also spent early 1964 in South Africa, losing to Hard six times and Bueno twice. The country’s economy was booming and its tournaments were sponsored by major firms, so one suspects that the three foreign stars were well-compensated for their geographically inconvenient tour. If Jones is to be believed, two of them did much better out of the deal than the third.

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Darlene Hard’s efforts to get the best of her opponents weren’t limited to aggressive volleying and off-court negotations. Julie Heldman called her “one of the great gameswomen of all times.” Ann Jones, who was apparently unconcerned about staying on Darlene’s Christmas card list, concurs:

If a match stood at 1-1 she was always a good sport, calling ‘good shot’ in her opponents favour when the ball landed near the line, but if it reached 5-all and deuce it seemed to me that she would try her best to influence the linesman in her favour. This used to infuriate me.

She certainly had an effect on other players. Heldman was talking about a grand slam mixed doubles final in which Hard twice ran off the court without a word. Later, she explained she needed to change underwear, but Heldman–presumably speaking for many women on the circuit–added, “you never knew what to believe.”

I would be doing you a disservice if I didn’t include this photo.

Hard’s most famous on-court reaction inspires wildly differing reactions even now. As the two-time defending champion, she reached the 1962 Forest Hills final, where she faced Margaret Smith (now Court). Darlene had beaten Smith in a tough semi-final the previous year, but she had lost to the 20-year-old Australian five straight times since. The protracted first set finally went to Smith, 9-7, after the Australian saved a set point and Hard’s serve abandoned her. She hit 16 double faults in the match.

Midway through the second set, two line calls went against the American. The second of them secured the sixth game, giving Smith a 4-2 lead. Hard argued, and when that didn’t avail, she broke down in tears. Play stopped for several minutes. Sports Illustrated called it a “weeping spell,” while Rod Laver remembers it as “a tantrum, wailing and stalking around the court.” For her part, Smith described it as “one of the most extraordinary incidents I have ever seen on a tennis court, and if it was prompted by gamesmanship and a wish to unsettle me it certainly had the desired result.”

The crowd got behind Hard, who returned the favor. Darlene bounced back, holding serve and then breaking Smith to love to even the set 4-all. But the reprieve was only temporary. Hard double-faulted again to lose her next service game, and when Smith looked sure to polish off the win, the American barely tried to return the last two serves. In Smith’s retelling:

Darlene stood twenty-five feet away from me at the presentation ceremony which followed on the stadium court. … Darlene’s behavior was inexcusable in a player of her caliber and experience. Or anyone else for that matter.

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In the stories that survive, Darlene Hard comes across as clever, occasionally brilliant, and often petulant. Her 1962 tour of Australia was a failure for all parties, save the tabloids. Hard was recovering from hepatitis, and she felt mistreated throughout, probably for good reason. But one journalist made a plausible claim that the root of the trouble was elsewhere: she “arrived in Australia with a chip on her shoulder because her request for higher expenses had been refused.” One of her more sympathetic hosts concluded that she seemed happiest when she had something to be unhappy about.

Had the American come along a decade later, her place in tennis history would be very different. She retired from the amateur game aged 28, still one of the top three singles players in the world. She had little hope of overtaking Margaret Smith, and she had mentored a young Billie Jean Moffitt (later King), so she knew that the fellow Californian was coming for her as well. Her days at the top would’ve been numbered.

But by the mid-1970s, there was a lot of money in women’s tournament tennis, and financial rewards weren’t limited to just one or two savvy operators. Many women who couldn’t beat either Margaret Court or Billie Jean King still did quite well for themselves. Controversy didn’t hurt, either. It’s appropriate that Heldman’s story about Hard’s purported mid-match “Tampax breaks” took place in the early 1960s, but didn’t see print until Grace Lichtenstein’s book, A Long Way Baby: Behind the Scenes in Women’s Tennis, came out in 1974.

Hard played a few professional events–including the 1969 US Open, where she won her final major doubles title–but quickly fell back into a quiet life as a teaching pro. Her legacy was left to admirers such as King and Laver. I’m sure she told the truth when she said she played because she loved the game. But she pushed the limits of what was acceptable in early 1960s women’s tennis, cracking the door a bit further open so that Billie Jean and her friends could remake the sport into something that would’ve suited Darlene Hard much better.